[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]
Superintelligence is an incoherent concept. Intelligence explosion isn’t possible.
[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]
Superintelligence is an incoherent concept. Intelligence explosion isn’t possible.
I can think of a couple of possibilities that are difficult to discuss (although perhaps not here):
Multiparty electoral democracy has no real utility, confers no legitimacy and doesn’t satisfy any primal urge for freedom laying dormant in non-Western peoples. “Democracy” as a concept is mainly used in international politics as a weapon to suppress other political systems through sanctions and military action. When a country becomes “democratic” by holding elections, it’s really just signalling its compliance with the West. The current period of liberal democratic triumphalism has created an intellectual Dark Ages of political thought. There are many valid forms of governance that don’t involved voting. Moreover, so-called “authoritarianism” has a proven track record for development.
“Free speech” is a luxury of hegemonic powers. Countries that are trying to self-determine their own political development necessarily have to suppress ideas that are backed up by the military and economic might of Western hegemony. Since multiparty elections don’t express the innate yearning of every human for freedom but rather compliance with Western power, whenever you see somebody in another culture expressing a desire for elections and other Western political “rights”, you should be extremely wary of their motives. They’re really signalling their willingness to sell out their own culture for power. They’re probably every bit as treacherous as the “authoritarian regime” in that country claims them to be. If you truly believe in the right to self-determination, you should support crackdowns on certain dissidents, since the marketplace for ideas has such a strong bias in favour of the current hegemonic power.
Has anyone had the opposite experience where a rational realization has an immediate emotional impact? For example, as a child I was quite afraid of the dark and would have to switch lights off in a particular order to ensure I was never subjected to too much darkness. I vividly remember the exact moment I overcame this fear. I was in the bathroom at the sink trying to avoid looking in the mirror because I had just watched a horror movie involving mirrors. It suddenly occurred to me that all my life I had been looking in the mirror without fear and that nothing had changed except my own disposition. This epiphany rushed through me. I suddenly realized that all such “supernatural” things were my own superstitions and not “out there” in the world. The world was concrete and could not change in inexplicable, “supernatural” ways (the concept of which was almost completely associated with camera trickery in movies for me—i.e., if it was dark something might happen, if I look away and look back something might be there, etc). I immediately lost my fear of the dark and it never returned. It could be, of course, that this loss of fear had been building over time and only in this moment did I manage to disassociate the rituals I had built around it, etc, rather than it being the case that this rational epiphany led to my loss of fear.
Here’s an interesting contrast: When I first moved from a small town to a big city I was fascinated by the fact that people cannot perform the simple task of walking down the street. Their attention is constantly being drawn to other things, they apparently have no awareness of or concern for other people, etc. They’re constantly stopping dead in front of you, even though they’re certainly aware they’re on a busy street. They talk on their phones, text, play games, they even walk along reading novels. If they meet someone they know, they’ll stop and have a conversation without moving out of the way. When somebody approaches a bus stop, they’ll simply stop dead and won’t move to the side, even if they’re blocking the only way through. To be sure, people can navigate around other people, but as soon as they do something else (stop, answer their phone, meet someone they know, etc), the fact that they’re on a busy street apparently disappears from their consciousness. There’s a complete absence of vigilance (and courtesy).
If people drove cars the same way they walk on a busy street there’d be dozens of accidents per mile. I guess the lesson is that human beings are capable of being careful when they need to be but most of the time they don’t need to be.
If you care about culture, (traditional) values and intact families, then democracy is empirically very bad (far from being “the worst form of government, except for all the others” it would place among the very worst). The question is then how you come to care about these things. For me it proceeded negatively: from a critical reading of political philosophy, I came to believe that the foundations of liberalism are incoherent; that what liberalism sees as constraints on individual freedom are nothing of the sort. That many of the norms, values and practices that make up a traditional society are non-voluntary—in the sense that it doesn’t make sense to speak of people assenting or not assenting to them—and therefore cannot be seen as constraints on human freedom at all; we’re born into them, they form part of our identity and they provide the context (even possibility) of our choices.
So I came to believe that the Enlightenment was the result of this kind of philosophical error and that it is no different from the kinds of philosophical error that bring people to, say, question whether an objective reality exists. The heady feeling one gets from an argument that leads to an absurd conclusion, in this case, led to the false belief that traditional society consisted of arbitrary constraints on human freedom and, eventually, to pointless reforms and revolutions. Consider this: If somebody proposes a model of the physical world and it’s incorrect, they have to change the model. But if somebody proposes a model of society and it’s incorrect, they can insist on reorganising society to fit the model. This is essentially what has been happening for the last several hundred years. If I said this is what happened with communism—that Marx developed a flawed model and Lenin tried to fit society to that flawed model—most people would probably accept that. Is it so hard to believe the same kind of process led to our own political order and continues to inform it?
On reflection, the contemporary Western view of politics, which I once accepted without question, appears to be utterly absurd. It has no choice but to see the history of humanity as one of oppression and this oppression is becoming increasingly bizarre. It was, perhaps, easy to believe that religion was inherently oppressive, at least given an overly literal interpretation of religion, or to believe that monarchy was oppressive, but now one must believe that the family was oppressive, that gender roles were oppressive, that sexual morality was oppressive, that even having a gender was oppressive, that monogamy was oppressive, etc. The list is ever expanding, the revisionist history gets more absurd by the day. Moreover, most people miss the fact that we’re talking about traditional society being inherently oppressive. There were, of course, bad monarchs, bad religious leaders, bad family circumstances, etc, but the liberal claim is that it was all bad, all the time (although it is apparently unnecessary that anyone noticed, since everyone was also ignorant). This is quite an extraordinary claim.
In my view, none of these things were oppressive. You’re born into a society, it has its pre-existing norms, values, roles and practices. You’re born into a set of pre-existing relationships and roles. These are not constraints, they’re part of your identity, they’re part of the enabling context in which you have and make choices. This includes things like how leaders are nominated, the roles of men and women, children and parents, etc. That you can imagine different ways of doing things does not imply that you are being deprived of a choice. Moreover, they are in many respects immutable. They continue to exist whether we understand them or misunderstand them and try to rebel against them. Thus, there is just no such thing as a liberal society. What we have instead is a traditional society where there are, for example, arbitrary constraints on leaders (constitutional “checks and balances”, elections, etc) that do little more than to ensure that we have incompetent leaders. We have family law and a welfare system that is bad for families. We encourage men to be bad fathers and husbands and women to be bad mothers and wives. We encourage children to rebel against their parents. So what we’re doing, in fact, is not ‘reform’ but just being bad in our roles as parents, spouses, leaders, lawmakers, etc, because we have a bad model of how society works that lead us to mistake incompetence, negligence and immorality for freedom.
Most intolerance doesn’t announce itself. It usually dresses itself up as something positive.
The cynic in me would say the so-called tolerant people within our society aren’t actually tolerant, rather they’ve adopted a potpourri of non-traditional behaviours in order to signal their faux tolerance, and then act with intolerance to so-called traditionalists (who are racist, homophobic, misogynist, authoritarian, etc). It all depends on how you value the liberal project. Personally I think it rests on shaky foundations, so I have some sympathy for this cynical view, although I think there are genuine moral concerns caught up in a very confused (and often destructive) ideology.
Probably the strongest example of intolerance dressed up as tolerance, though, is Western political ideology and how we relate to other societies. The democratic countries are extremely intolerant of other political systems; probably more so than many of their most hated rivals. This is expressed in terms of freedom, individual rights, etc, but elections and other Western political institutions are only tenuously connected to freedom. It’s certainly not the case, as is usually assumed by Westerners, that elections are by definition a form of freedom and no further argument is needed. A case needs to be made.
Most discussion of Western political ideology tends to assume what it’s trying to prove. For example, it’s assumed that being incarcerated for a political crime is much worse than being incarcerated for something recognised as a crime in the West, but this is only obviously the case if you already agree with Western political ideology. It’s not hard to come up with arguments (the standard line being that it’s too easy to abuse) but if a country started giving political prisoners fair trials and following accepted legal practice for incarcerating people based on well-defined political crimes, would we accept that? I doubt it. The fact is that we won’t accept anything short of them adopting our practices because their perceived superiority stems not from the particular benefits of adopting them but from that they are ours.
The same is true for freedom of speech, assembly, etc. I’ve been stuck in traffic because of a protest and it occurred to me then that marching down the street is something we make an exception for in political circumstances but would almost definitely outlaw if we didn’t have that ideal. Are countries that don’t share our ideals outlawing protests because they hate freedom or because that’s just a really, extremely obvious thing to outlaw if you don’t share our ideals? Calls for elections in countries without them are calls for the destruction of the prevailing political system. In the West, communists, fascists, anarchists and other rivals to the prevailing political system (as opposed to a party within the system) are not tolerated either. They’re often demonised and sometimes they’re arrested.
These are some of the ways we disguise intolerance for political and cultural differences as sympathy for the plight of individuals under other regimes (while simultaneously ignoring their differences from us, as if everybody has a Westerner trapped inside them, just waiting to be freed). There’s also the tendency to file under propaganda any expression of political views that doesn’t fall under the party system (for example., that the party system is not optimal). There are Chinese and Singaporean political thinkers (and some leaders) who write very eloquently about the limitations of Western political thought and are summarily dismissed as having ulterior motives. Almost everything the Chinese government does is dismissed as a way to prop up the regime, as if nobody there cares about the fate of their own country at all.
Of course, this all stems from the Western idea that the state is an antagonist and opportunist rather than an organic part of society (and, relatedly, that society doesn’t transcend the individual). These ideas are not shared by others but, again, rather than provide an argument we just assume differences in opinion are examples of oppression. Often these differences in opinion are shared by the very people we consider “oppressed” (this is where we bring in nice words like “enlightened” which deny the autonomy of the individual we’re expressing our sympathy for; once they’ve become like us, they’ll understand why being like us is better, but until then… well, screw their opinions).
I downvoted because of the assumption that there’s something obviously wrong with jealousy and that monogamy is suboptimal. It’s possible that both jealousy and monogamy are necessary components of reaching areas of utility that can’t be accessed in the context of casual relationships. You could be gaining short-term pay off (not feeling jealous, being able to satisfy short-term urges) at the cost of higher utility long-term pay off (a traditional romantic relationship). Nothing is the story suggest that you’d obviously know if you were missing out on the latter either.
I try to view problems as opportunities. If it’s raining outside, that’s training in the rain. Snowing? Awesome, snow running! Too hot? High-temperature training. Too cold? Low-temperature training. I’m too tired? Fatigue training. I also try to look at things from what I call a “mediative” point of view. So let’s say I’m out running my regular route but it’s cold, windy, raining, etc, and I feel miserable. I try to remember how I felt running the same route on a beautiful day and bring my mind back to that state. Or if I’m fatigued, I try to remember a day when what I was doing felt easy and set myself the challenge of trying to regain that mindset. Again, it’s about turning problems into opportunities: fatigue is an opportunity for fatigue-mastery. It helps to take an interest in the mental element of training, sports, etc, so you can think of mastering mental adversity as part of your training.
Many years ago I had an intense, year-long friendship with a girl with BPD. We didn’t date (although she did permanently break off our friendship as if we were dating, something I hadn’t known was a social possibility before then). I have to say, her emotional volatility was utterly mesmerising. During the time I knew her my thinking was utterly transformed. It wasn’t so much her vulnerability or my desire to help her, more that it was impossible to keep up and it became exhilarating. I didn’t know where I stood from one minute to the next. I could go from being her closest friend to her most hated enemy, and back again, in the space of one conversation. It was bizarre and incredibly addictive. During that time I convinced myself there was something wrong with me and with rationality in general. I got interested in continental philosophy, I toyed with spirituality. After she “broke up” with me, my old self returned. But it was an interesting experience. Almost like joining a cult.
I believe there are studies of crime that come to similar conclusions—i.e., criminality tends not to be profitable and it’s more about social networks. I think a lot of irrational behavior has similar explanations. We need to cast our net wider. Why do people become musicians? Why do they become artists and entertainers? In these cases there’s the complication of the audience but all of the activities are very strange indeed if you take a step back and look at them. Playing one of the many odd instruments available or putting paint to canvas are strange behaviors (putting aside talk of creativity, expression, etc, which offer little insight IMO and just serve to obscure what’s genuinely interesting about these activities). It’s all about niche building. A set of historically contingent social and technological factors have coalesced on the possibility of finding a place in society doing something as odd as playing the violin. Nobody just woke up one morning and thought “let’s blow into a hollowed out piece of wood” or “let’s get a group of people together and pretend to be other people while a larger group of people watch.” There’s a long, strange history to these things. The factors involved are super-personal.
Religion is another excellent example. Some people have managed to find a place in the world as celibate monks. It’s not a matter of personal irrationality but rather a society that, through a sequence of strange and historically contingent machinations, has settled on a state where one can indeed “have a living” as a celibate monk. Given this, it’s little wonder we find people who choose to be celibate monks in our society; such a choice is not irrational on the personal scale on which most people live their lives. Terrorism is the same; we have terrorists because society, for whatever reason, has coalesced on a situation where one can find satisfaction through being a member of a terrorist organization. One can have ones human needs satisfied; including social relationships, status and a sense of worth. Ideologies don’t physically exist. Groups have ideologies. To have an ideology there must first be a set of people, a tightly knit social group, to espouse it. Much like religion I doubt the content of the ideology matters much; the form of the ideology, indeed, probably has more to do with how it fits the daily activities of group members rather than as something outsiders can understand (as is probably the case with religion). The concepts probably form a social exchange for in-group cohesion and should be analyzed as such.
This, I think, is the correct level to study these things. Don’t look at the ideology; look at the actual material embodiment of that ideology, the group that espouses it, and ask yourself not “How do people believe this nonsense?” or “Why do people believe something so irrational?” but “How does this group of people sustain itself?” and “What role does this way of speaking and way of interpreting events play in sustaining in-group cohesion?”
It’s not so much the content as the presentation. The tone is incredibly self-absorbed and condescending. I thought the whole thing was a joke until I encountered the above quoted paragraph with its apparent sincerity. Presumably some of the content is intended to be tongue-in-check and some of it posturing, but it’s difficult to separate. There’s a compounding weirdness to the whole thing. Fetishes or open relationships or whatever aren’t in themselves causes for concern but when somebody is trying to advocate for rationalism and a particular approach to ethics, the sense that you’re following them somewhere very strange isn’t good to have.
Let me try to make that clearer: Utilitarianism already has the problem of frequently sounding as if sociopaths are discussing ethics as something entirely abstract. Applying that to relationships, in the form of evangelical polyamory, takes it to another level of squeamishness (as others here have indicated). Seeing those ideas put into practice in the context of the dating profile of a self-professed sadist (who has been accused of wanting to take over the world, no less), replete with technical terminology (“primary”, “dance card”, etc), condescending advice to prospective conquests to help them overcome their fear of rejection and a general tone of callousness, sends it over the edge. Read straight, the profile could almost serve as a reductio for SIAI-brand ethics and rationality.
I’m also worried about who the intended audience is. Since I can’t imagine anyone not deeply immersed in the Less Wrong community responding positively to it, I was left with the sense that perhaps our community’s figurehead is (ab)using his position in ways that, as some else put it, “don’t help the phyg pattern matching.” It’s basically an advertisement saying, “I’m a leader in small community x and I’m open to your sexual advances, so don’t be shy.”
I wouldn’t personally object, no. This is happening every day and, like most people, I do nothing. The difference is I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing anything either. That isn’t to say we should live in a society without laws or moral strictures; you need a certain amount of protection for society to function at all. You can’t condone random violence. But this is a pragmatic rather than altruistic concern.
I reject MWI, reject consequentialism/utilitarianism, reject reductionism, reject computationalism, reject Eliezer’s metaethics. There’s probably more. I think most of the core sequences are wrong/wrongheaded. Large parts of it trade in nonsense.
I appreciate the scope of Eliezer’s ambition though, and enjoy Less Wrong.
I don’t think people have (ethical) value simply because they exist. I think they should have to do a lot more than that before I should have to care whether they live or die.
Here’s some dating advice: Don’t use the sentence “you shouldn’t worry about disqualifying yourself or thinking that I’m not accessible to you” anytime anywhere, let alone on your dating profile. Some career advice: If your day job supposedly involves ethics, you should probably tone down the publicly-available dating profile where you advertise yourself as a polyamorous sadist who welcomes the casual advances of women who “want to sleep with me once so you can tell your grandchildren” (provided they don’t “disqualify” themselves by thinking you’re not “accessible”, I suppose).
I’m hoping the whole thing is tongue-in-cheek...? (If so, it’s merely the product of poor judgment, rather than terrifying.)
“The speedup in information technology contrasts dramatically with the slowdown everywhere else.”
I think this is the key sentence in Thiel’s article. The issue is then to what degree the application of information technology to the sciences can alleviate the problem. Interestingly, Kurzweil’s thesis is essentially that he sees general speed-up as a product of the other sciences becoming information sciences, but he is clearly much more optimistic about the degree to which this is happening and has already happened.
There’s evidence among humans that problem solving can be decoupled from having a functioning long-term goal system (i.e., autistic savants, certain types of frontal lobe damage, etc). So I think it’s possible to create a ‘dumb’ problem solver that won’t form any nefarious goals (or any goals) and would be overseen by humans. Furthermore, I think Nesov is wrong here; creating robust institutions and social stability, curing disease, etc—the elements of “saving the world”—fall under technical problem solving just as much as uploading, nano tech, protein folding or whatever. Advanced tech is inclusive of world saving.
If I could just use it whenever I want without side effects I’d love to take a week or month off here and there, increasing usage as I grow older. If it’s more of a one shot thing I’m not sure. Right now I think I can actively contribute to advancing the cutting edge but if in 10-20 years we’re not seeing the kind of progress I hope for I’d consider long-term suspension so I can wake up in a world that has caught up to my ambitions.
I think one of the useful things about being able to identify people by name is that you frequently end up entertaining a contrary opinion you would have otherwise dismissed because it’s held by someone you respect. Such events are probably more significant to personal development than discovering a gem in the rough you would have otherwise overlooked. Hiding karma probably has more utility than hiding names.
Maybe I’m just cynical but I think people vastly overestimate their own goodness. Often “goodness” is just a way to dress up powerlessness. Like an overweight man might say he’s “stocky” or an overweight woman might say she’s “curvy,” so an undesirable or shy man or woman might emphasize the upside: “I would never cheat.” There’s a version of the typical mind fallacy in there: a person might genuinely think they would never cheat but be extrapolating from a position where the opportunity rarely presents itself. We can all talk about how, if we were in a position of political power, we’d never succumb to bribes or cronyism because we don’t have any political power. It both makes us look good and, as far as we know, it’s true. I think testimony, especially when it comes to ones moral worth, is the least valuable form of data available.